3. Welcome to Issue E! It’s been a bit of an
unplanned hiatus since the last issue, and
it is lovely to be back!
We’re in the middle of the transition between two seasons -
Autumn slowly becoming colder, leaves changing colours and
blowing off branches, filling streets with rust-coloured piles. And
with the clocks having been turned back an hour, the drawing in
of nights has started in earnest.
What were your “back-to-school” plans for the remainder of
2015? Have your thoughts turned towards Christmas?
Here’s to a beautiful Autumn/Winter 2015, filled with joy,
laughter and time with family and friends. Enjoy the warmth of
the coming duvet days and when it arrives, the promise of
a New Year!
All the best!
Keely Khoury
4. Love
6 Why Dark Chocolate Is Good For You
7 Life Lessons From A Three-And-A-Half Year Old
9 Learning
Art
10 Essential Elegance
11 Shift Work
12 Light and Day
Feminism
16 For The Love Of Colouring
18 Inequal Pay For Working Women Remains A Problem
Inspiration
21 An Inspirational Woman In Business: Prisca Schmarsow
5.
6. Love 6
Why dark chocolate is good for you
After centuries of claims of the health benefits of dark
chocolate, scientists at Louisiana State University have
identified at least part of the reason.
Certain bacteria in the stomach (the “good” bacteria
including lactic acid) ferment the dark chocolate,
producing anti-inflammatory compounds that help
the heart.
By reducing the inflammation of cardio-vascular
tissue, the long-term risk of stroke (and possibly other
diseases and conditions) is reduced.
Head researcher John Finley, Ph.D., said that
combining dark chocolate with “solid fruits such as
pomegranates and acai” could provide even more
health benefits.
It’s pleasing to those of us that love dark chocolate
to hear it mentioned in the same sentence as other
“super foods.”
American Chemical Society. “Precise reason for health benefits of dark choco-
late: Thank hungry gut microbes.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 18 March 2014.
<www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140318154725.htm>.
7. 7 Love
Life lessons from a three-and-a-half year old
Do not go near volcanoes.
Do not throw things at people.
Ants are friendly.
Don’t let flies in the house to sting you.
8.
9. Learning
“What kind is my hair?”
“Curly?”
“No, it’s different hair, different from the water.”
“Aahhh… wet.”
“Yes, that’s it, wet.”
Love9
10. Art
What is it? Does the word
“elegant” feel a bit old-fashioned
to you?
Merriam Webster says elegant
is “characterized by dignified rich-
ness and grace, as of design, dress,
style, etc,; luxurious or opulent in a
restrained, tasteful manner.”
Also, “marked by concision, inci-
siveness, and ingenuity; cleverly apt
and simple [an elegant solution to a
complex problem].”
For me, the important words
are grace and restrained. Not a
lot is restrained in today’s current
approach to life of sharing far too
much (most of what I think should
be private) information and flaunt-
ing one’s financial status. Part of
the very long definition of grace is
“thoughtfulness towards others.”
I think elegance can be an
approach to life - dignified grace,
cleverly apt and simple, thoughtful
towards others. It can be difficult,
amongst the daily stresses, to think
kindly of others, to offer the gentle
response. I struggle with it daily.
Yet what is richness if not depth
of experience, beauty and quality?
Depth that is achieved through ded-
icated application of skill and perse-
verance through difficult times.
Yet today, quality is often over-
looked for the flash in the pan - the
quick, easy, nice to look at option
made from inferior materials, with
slap dash construction. Thus at the
first sign of stress and complication,
what is essentially fool’s gold crum-
bles and disappears, not having
been made to withstand centuries
of use.
This can be seen in all areas of
life, from political decisions made
with an eye to short term voter
popularity, rather than long term
substantive improvements; to build-
ing projects on ground that should
be left wild as a protector against
extreme weather; and the contin-
ued rise of the Slow Food move-
ment in opposition to the “have it
all, right now” lifestyles created by
a single global economy.
I think local produce, without
air miles, prepared at home with
friends and family or in a nearby
café or restaurant, is an excellent
example of elegance as an ap-
proach to life. In this case, luxu-
riousness in a tasteful, restrained
manner.
The volume of world problems
is overwhelming, and I think we
sometimes need to remind our-
selves that many small changes add
up to big change. So to that end, I
am going to strive for the cleverly
apt and simple solution, hoping to
achieve dignified richness in my
experiences through thoughtfulness
towards others. No small order.
Essential elegance
10
12. 12Art
Light and day
In today’s 24-7,
artificial-light-filled worlds,
circadian health may be one
of the most important factors in
building a consistently healthy
lifestyle.
As more studies examine the
role circadian rhythms play in
health, many of the results point
towards the necessity of working
with, not against, our individual
internal body clock.
Webster’s Dictionary*
defines circadian as “designating
or of behavioural or physiological
rhythms associated with the 24-
hour cycles of the earth’s rotation
as, in man, the regular metabol-
ic, glandular and sleep rhythms
which may persist through a dislo-
cation of day and night caused by
high speed travel.”
Convenience, international
travel and changes in societal ex-
pectations of success have com-
bined to create the possibility of
lifestyles singularly removed from
the natural rhythms of nature.
Many aspects of life are now
available anytime, with home
delivery removing the need to
travel to acquire or experience
things. International, ie, cross-
time-zone, travel is now a regular
occurrence in many peoples’ lives,
for both business and pleasure.
And as more people around the
world take up employment within
the current capitalist system and
move to urban areas, social pa-
rameters of success continue
to change.
Combined, these factors have
the ability to severely stress our
circadian rhythms, and scientists
are beginning to suspect, and
prove in a variety of studies, links
between circadian health and
overall health.
Phyllis C. Zee, M.D., senior
author of a study examining the
effect of light exposure on body
weight said, “Light is the most
potent agent to synchronize your
internal body clock that regulates
circadian rhythms, which in turn
also regulate energy balance.”1
Zee is the Benjamin and Virgin-
ia T. Boshes Professor of Neurolo-
gy and Director of the Northwest-
ern Medicine Sleep and Circadian
Rhythms Research Program at
Northwestern University Feinberg
School of Medicine. She is also a
neurologist at Northwestern Me-
morial Hospital.
Much has already been said
about the dangers of too much
light at night before bedtime, and
while Zee concurs, she says that,
“It’s also bad not to get enough
13. Art13
light at the appropriate time
during the day.”
Scientists at the University of
Manchester recently found that
the colour of light has a major
effect on how the brain clock
measures time of day, which of
course affects the ways in which
our bodies function. Our internal
body clock regulates functions
including metabolism, blood pres-
sure, body temperature, ability to
perform physically (ie workout),
mental alertness and more.
“Besides the well-known
changes in light intensity that
occur as the sun rises and sets,
the scientists found that during
twilight, light is reliably bluer than
during the day.”2
Dr Timothy Brown, from the
Faculty of Life Sciences, led the
research and said, “In theory, co-
lour could be used to manipulate
our clock, which could be useful
for shift workers or travellers
wanting to minimise jet lag.”
Additionally, Zee says that
not getting sufficient light at the
appropriate time of day “could
de-synchronize your internal body
clock, which is known to alter
metabolism and can lead to
weight gain.”
Zee’s study is the first time that
a link between light exposure and
weight has been shown. She says,
“The timing, intensity and dura-
tion of your light exposure during
the day is linked to your weight.”
In not so good news for night
owls, co-lead author Kathryn Reid,
research associate professor of
neurology at Northwestern Uni-
versity Feinberg School of Med-
icine said that, “The earlier this
light exposure occurred during
the day, the lower the individuals’
body mass index.”
Interestingly, the study found
that the influence of morning light
exposure on body weight was
independent of an individual’s
physical activity level, caloric in-
take, sleep timing, age or season
and accounted for about 20 per
cent of a person’s BMI.
Many people currently do not
get enough natural light in the
morning because of the indoor
lifestyles that predominates in so
many of today’s modern societ-
ies. Work environments are often
lit at a level of 200 to 300 lux of
brightness, whereas the study
showed that the minimum thresh-
old of light intensity for having a
lower BMI was 500 lux. Even on a
14. cloudy day, outdoor light is more
than 1,000 lux of brightness,
a level that is very difficult to
achieve with usual indoor lighting.
Getting outside is an easy
way to get more natural light on
a regular basis. A short walk at
lunchtime is better than not going
outside at all, and a short walk
as part of your morning commute
would be even better. Scientists
say 20 to 30 minutes of morning
light (between 8 am and noon) is
enough to affect BMI.
* New World College
1
Northwestern University. “Morning rays keep
off pounds.” ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.
com/releases/2014/04/140402212531.htm
(accessed August 12, 2015).
2
PLOS. “Telling the time of day by color.”
ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releas-
es/2015/04/150417145207.htm (accessed
August 12, 2015).
Light and day continued
14Art
15.
16. 16Feminism
For me, bright colours make my
day. I love everything associated
with a desk and school. Show me
a new set of coloured pencils and I
sigh… beautiful. I even like the waxy
smell of crayons.
So when the phenomenon of
mindfulness colouring began, I was
interested. I thought, “It can’t be a
bad thing to encourage people to
take time to slow down and appreci-
ate their own creativity.”
I did feel a slight unease as more
and more mindfulness colouring
books appeared for sale. Sales didn’t
chime with my ideas around taking
time to slow down, notice what is
going on in the moment and possibly
meditate in some way.
Nor did the sharing of “mindful”
creations on social media. Tuning
into yourself, your thoughts, taking
time out of a busy day to do some-
thing calming, to be in the moment
of creating something… doesn’t fit
with continual social media updates.
I believe mindfulness is private,
different for each individual. And yes,
I understand that after being mindful
is “done,” an individual could post on
social media about it. I would argue
that doing so is missing the point of
true mindfulness.
Then I read words from Eva Wise-
man in The Observer, “The mind-
blowing expense of mindfulness.”
“The difficult thing about medi-
tation is that you don’t have to pay
for it. All you need to meditate is
a quiet space in which you can be
alone. Which I think, to our busy
ears, sounds a bit suspicious. How
can it be of worth today if it doesn’t
have a price? Hence its rebranding
as mindfulness [and into] a multi-
billion-pound business. Where med-
itation suggests something wrong
with you that needs to be fixed,
mindfulness suggests something very
right – you’re ambitious, successful.
And proud to tell anybody who will
listen that you’re working to be even
more so.”
Her article brought my objections
to the tsunami of mindfulness colour-
ing books and apps into focus. The
tension of today’s world between
the public and private sides of life
is nearly gone, like a rubber band
so overstretched that it hangs limp.
There is no tension anymore because
the majority of people have given up
the private to the public, both their
public persona and the public as an
external, nameless crowd.
Really tending to the private self
cannot involve self-aggrandisation.
So while we can applaud the in-
creased visibility of mental health, of
being in the moment and of taking
time away from the everyday stress-
es of rushing and juggling to do
something personally enjoyable, let’s
keep our mindfulness to ourselves.
For the love of colouring
17.
18. 18Feminism
If the current rate of change in
closing the gender wage gap con-
tinues, most working women today
will not be alive to see parity occur.
In the United States, the gender
wage gap is predicted to close in
the year 20581
with women los-
ing more than $430,0002
over a
working lifetime when compared
to earnings of men of similar ages,
education and hours of work.
In the United Kingdom, in 2013,
the gender pay gap rose for the
first time in five years and now
stands at more than 19 per cent.
That means that, annually, from the
fourth of November, women effec-
tively work for free for the remain-
der of the year.
That equates to approximate-
ly 14 years of additional work for
women in order to equal a man’s
lifetime earnings, says the Char-
tered Management Institute.
In addition to the basic salary
pay gap is a persistent “bonus pay
gap.” Particularly affecting women
between the ages of 46 and 60
years of age, the bonus pay gap
between male and female manag-
ers stands, on average, at more
than £10,000 per year.
“The average bonus for a female
director is £41,956, while for male
directors the average pay out is
£53,010.”3
Persistent earnings inequality
contributes to lower pay, less family
income and more poverty.
The Institute for Women’s Policy
Research (IWPR) said recently that
nearly 60 per cent of women would
earn more4
if working women were
paid the same as men of the same
age with similar education and
hours of work.
Even more shocking is IWPR’s
research showing that equal pay
would reduce poverty by half
for families with a working woman,
which includes single women living
on their own, single mothers and
married women.
The IWPR briefing paper showed
the current poverty rate to be 8.1
per cent. After pay adjustment, that
figure would drop to 3.9 per cent.
The Fawcett Society5
says,
“There are converging reasons for
why the gender pay gap still exists.
These include the:
• Impact of childcare responsibili-
ties (the motherhood penalty)
• Dearth of women in senior roles
• Over-representation of women
in low-wage sectors (occupa-
tional segregation)
• Outright discrimination
As difficult as I find it to believe,
and as incorrect as I’d like to think
that last point is, outright discrimi-
nation still occur.
Unfortunately, gender discrim-
ination is so institutionalised that
it often goes unrecognised. Even
professionals who many would con-
sider to be the most impartial have
Inequal pay for working women remains a problem
19.
20. unrecognised, and thus unacknowl-
edged, biases against women.
For example, orchestra auditions
and academic peer review process-
es have both been shown to benefit
from gender-blind procedures.
“Using data from audition re-
cords, researchers6
found that blind
orchestra auditions increased the
probability that a woman would
advance from preliminary rounds by
50 per cent.
“About 10 per cent of orchestra
members were female around 1970,
compared to about 35 per cent in
the 1990s, and researchers attribute
about 30 per cent of that gain to
the advent of blind auditions.”
In the sciences, despite women
earning a higher proportion of bach-
elor’s degrees than men since the
mid 1980s, it comes as no surprise
to learn that scholarly authorship is
a very gendered area.
A study of more than eight
million published academic papers
found that women continue to be
significantly under-represented in
scholarly authorship.7
“Since academic publishing is
very important to being hired as
a faculty member and being pro-
moted, the under-representation
of women as authors in academic
publications and in more prestigious
authorship positions potentially
affects the representation of women
faculty in academia.”
Sadly, even women themselves
are not free from such institution-
alised gender bias. A Goldman
Sachs report on small businesses
found that, consistent with national
wage gaps, women business own-
ers typically pay themselves 80 per
cent of the salary of male business
owners.8
As part of an entrepreneur de-
velopment programme, Goldman
Sachs tracked the pay of partici-
pants and found that by the end of
the programme, female graduates
had started paying themselves 92
per cent of male graduates’ average
salary, a gender pay gap reduction
of 60 per cent.
So what can be done to reduce
the gender pay gap by 100 per
cent? A lot! Here are three changes
that would make swift, noticeable
change.
1. Make parental leave more finan-
cially rewarding to encourage
men to take up more childcare
2. Challenge stereotypes, any-
where and everywhere
3. Show the salary gap. Have
companies complete and publish
annual gender pay audits
1
http://statusofwomendata.org/app/up-
loads/2015/02/EE-CHAPTER-FINAL.pdf
2
https://www.whitehouse.gov/equal-pay/career
3
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ann-francke/
fixing-pay-means-fixing-culture-_b_5690670.html
4
http://bit.ly/1ikgRJY
5
http://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/our-work/cam-
paigns/gender-pay-gap/
6
http://bit.ly/1j6fM5L
7
http://bit.ly/1Mk0NkV
8
http://bit.ly/1isk1WG; http://bit.ly/1g1TcrE
21. Principled, supportive, challeng-
ing and beautiful. What comes to
mind? Possibly not web design. Yet
it is those four features of the online
design community that makes it so
enjoyable for Prisca Schmarsow, a
website designer.
Her motto is “Web design: Love
it, Do it, Teach it,” and she does.
Which she laughs about because at
one point in her career, she actively
disliked computers.
Prisca started her career as a
graphic designer for print publi-
cations, specialising in traditional
hand drawing. When she moved
from Bavaria to London, she start-
ed her freelance company in order
to earn extra money and did work
including designing and drawing the
chalkboard signs outside pubs and
restaurants.
“I’m a great drawer, and I was
able to make very detailed, ornate
signs. Originally, they really were
done in chalk, then they moved to
liquid chalk pens and now… too few
independent places are left.”
When larger companies began
buying up the small businesses that
made up her clientele, Prisca be-
gan to look around for other types
of work. At the time, she says she
“hated computers” and really, really
didn’t want to have anything to do
with them.
However, “My partner told me
that I have to try something to
know what I really think. You can’t
decide before trying.”
So Prisca took a digital design
computer course and hasn’t looked
back since.
“I love web design,” she says.
“It encompasses everything that I
find exciting.
“The web is one of the few areas
that still allows free speech. There
is no intermediary. It is all about
people power!
“Of course, corporations and
governments are actively trying to
censor that freedom. It is some-
thing we all need to fight for.
“Recent political events around
the world would not be what they
are without the people power of
Twitter, Facebook and the internet
in general.
“I think it’s easy to forget how
young the internet is as a medium
for free-sharing communication. It
hasn’t even been that many years
since Microsoft was the behemoth,
and nobody used anything except
Internet Explorer.
“Now, there is a variety of brows-
ers all providing automatic updates.
Which of course means that you’re
not forced into constantly buying
something new to upgrade and
keep up.
Inspiration2 1
An inspirational woman in business:
<strong>Prisca-Schmarsow</strong>
22. “That’s another reason Open
Source is so revolutionary.”
After falling in love with web
design in general, Prisca discov-
ered open source, all-inclusive,
fully accessible web standards and
has adopted them as her working
philosophy. She remains inspired by
Jeffrey Zeldman, Molly Holzshlag
and Eric Meyer, three pioneers in
the development of the open web.
Open Source refers to something
that can be modified because its
design is publicly accessible. Spe-
cifically, in web design and devel-
opment, open source code means
that it is available for modification
by anyone (source code is the cod-
ing that runs software).
An important part of open
source coding is its accessibility,
something that Prisca emphasises
in the MA course she teaches.
“I want my students to have
practical skills they can translate
into paid work,” she says. “So many
higher education courses skip the
real-life situations and focus only
on ideas. It’s the application of
ideas that will change the world.
“Having taught both graphic
design and web design, I see a
difference in openness between the
two groups of students.
“In graphic design, students are
much less likely (and willing) to
share their solutions or work to-
gether. In web design, failing is part
of learning and developing, and I
constantly emphasise the necessity
of designing inclusively.”
As well as teaching web design,
Prisca runs the Eyedea Web Design
Studio. She is the founder and
head designer.
“In the Studio, our individual
work/life puzzles are all self-deter-
mined. When a project comes in,
we sit down together and set goals
and deadlines and then we all get
to work, at our own time and pace.
No one works a rigid 9-5 schedule,
which we all like, since most of us
were or are freelance.
“I’m lucky to have built a studio
team of people that I know I can
rely on, and they know they can
rely on me. If things get tough,
which they do, especially near the
launch date of a site, we support
and help each other.
“That kind of support is some-
thing I have found to be unique to
the web community.
“You can connect to people in a
way you probably wouldn’t other-
wise be able to do. You can work
with people in a community of your
own choosing.
“And people that really love the
web are generally amazing people.
Some of the leading developers
and designers spoke for free at
an event I ran as part of the MA
course, and they did that because
of their love and dedication to the
web community.
23. “There aren’t many sectors in
professional life where you get to
fairly easily meet the people who
are at the forefront of development,
who are making systemic changes
to the way we live our lives.
“The web is constantly moving -
changing and developing.
“I can see how it might seem
confusing to those outside the
industry, and all I can say is that
when you work in it, it’s not so
bad. It definitely isn’t an area of
work where you can get comfy or
complacent, though. It’s simply a
less-established medium, which is
what makes it so exciting.
“I think that is part of the buzz
of working in web. No matter what
area you work in, at some point
you’ll have a success where you
figured something out, and you can
enjoy that. For a minute.
“Because then there is another
problem to find a solution to and
someone coming along behind you
to try to improve on your previous
solution.
“So definitely exciting, challeng-
ing, fun, supportive and yes,
beautiful!”
It has to be asked, of course.
What’s it like being a woman in
such an obviously male-dominated
field of work?
“I’d like to think we won the
battles of feminism and so can deal
with individual situations when they
arise. However, I’m not sure that’s
the case.
“Online harassment obviously
needs to be addressed. Anytime you
read something online, you can see
the huge imbalance. It’s at a crisis
point and has been for some time.
There is a lot of discrimination going
on, and of course, it’s complicated
to solve.
“In the web sector, conferences
have a problem with the ‘boys club’
image, and decisions such as having
‘booth babes’ at events contribute
to that. It is at least being discussed
now, and some events have codes
of conduct and advertise ways to
contact the organisers to report
harassment.
“Changing the way the web is
promoted would help. It is a tech-
nical field of work, and you can see
with the number of women who
begin STEM [science, technology,
engineering and math] study and
career paths, it is exciting and
interesting.
“Something obviously happens
along the way to reduce the num-
ber of women, and that’s where the
complicated solutions have to start.
“We have to have confidence.
The web is wonderful and should be
wonderful for everyone.
“For me and my studio, we have
to continue doing work we believe
in and stick to our principles and
ethics.”
http://eyedea.eu
24. Letters issue E Autumn 2015
Know yourself, so you can be in the best place to
“bloom where you are planted”
